Tweet this: It's the year of the Twitter

 

 
 
 
 
Twitter hits its tipping point; When Britney Spears, Shaq, and Barack Obama joined Twitter.com, it was a sure sign the social-networking site had breached the zeitgeist. And with growth outpacing that of Facebook and MySpace, 2009 could be the year of the tweet.
 

Twitter hits its tipping point; When Britney Spears, Shaq, and Barack Obama joined Twitter.com, it was a sure sign the social-networking site had breached the zeitgeist. And with growth outpacing that of Facebook and MySpace, 2009 could be the year of the tweet.

Photograph by: Screen grab, Twitter

If, as Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan once enthused, the medium is the message, then the message of the growing "twittering" phenomenon could be we don't have much to say to one another, but would like to say it often.

Twitter.com, the online social networking site that has nearly seven million people microblogging about their lives, allows users to send each other quirky text messages, or "tweets," under 140 characters — about the length of a Facebook status update.

Due to this bare-bones approach to communicating, all the world's a-twitter about this rapidly growing online application.

"It's the simplicity, the elegance of it," says Steve Dotto, host of the televised technology show Dotto Tech and a Twitter user. "It might be the same reason why the popularity of e-mailing is declining, but texting is increasing."

Part of Twitter's appeal, says Dotto, is the challenge of trying to publish such messages in tight constraints.

"It's a new form of writing that takes a lot of thought, because you have to boil your core message down to its simplest form," he says.

Spurred by the popularity of web-browsing cellphones such as the iPhone and BlackBerry, Twitter has seen its traffic grow 900 per cent in just one year, as politicians, celebrities, athletes and even business leaders have made headlines with their tweets.

The online social network received four million unique visitors for the month of February, up from 123,000 from the same month last year. It's a massive jump from 14th most popular social-networking site on the Internet to No. 3, right after behemoths Facebook and MySpace.

"Facebook is to 2007 as Twitter is to 2009," says Roger Kondrat, co-owner of Mighty Mouth Media, a social media consultancy.

Working out of Calgary, Kondrat specializes in helping companies use social media to connect with customers and prospects.

Intrigued by blogs, social networks, and podcasts as marketing tools, it was only natural that Kondrat was one of Twitter's earliest users almost three years ago.

He has used Twitter to recruit ambassadors for companies, manage features for products through customer feedback, and engage potential customers.

"It's the most open communication platform out there," says Kondrat. "In 2009, (I will not have) a meeting where Twitter will not be brought up."

Because of its 140-word constraints, the most popular tweets tend to either be breaking-news events or clever quips about the mundane.

Some 15 minutes before the New York Times had the story of January's Hudson River plane crash in its website, and some 15 hours before the story hit its print edition, Twitter users who witnessed the crash live were blogging about it. The site was also the first place news broke of the Mumbai terror attacks last November in which 173 died.

Ever since Barack Obama used the network to reach out to 237,500 young people last year, a number of other politicians have also jumped on the bandwagon. Toronto Mayor David Miller tweets, and claims more than 4,000 followers. So does London Mayor Boris Johnson, who texted 20,000 followers after testing an electric car this month.

"You remember that bit in Star Wars, when they leap into hyperspace and the stars are turned into white streaks? That's how the Tesla was!" Johnson tweeted.

Celebrities such as Britney Spears, Jimmy Fallon and P. Diddy have also latched onto the service in a bid to keep themselves brimming atop cultural consciousness.

John Cleese has written about his pet chickens, while MC Hammer has mused on the economy ("We just fed the nation 15 (years) of evil soup. Now they're throwing up.")

People Magazine reported that Jennifer Aniston broke up with rocker boyfriend John Mayer because of his obsessive twittering. Skipping publicists and gossip blogs, Mayer later wrote on his Twitter page, "this heart didn't come with instructions."

The opportunity for these celebrities to circumvent the media has made it a real obsession in Hollywood, says Dotto.

"If you want to know why the Israeli Defense Forces are using Twitter, it's because it allows them to say something in their words before the media gets a hold of it," he says. "That's why it's become big with both celebrities and business leaders.

"And it doesn't matter whether it's good or bad news, the fact that it comes directly from the mouths of these people cuts them some slack. So I'm not sure people have found relevance in it yet, but everyone sees the potential."

Even with no money exchanging hands in these social networks, the advertising potential is immense. Five months ago when Twitter began seeing an upswing in popularity, it turned down a $500-million U.S. buyout from rival Facebook, Inc.

Perhaps that's because those who do tweet do it with an alarming, obsessive frequency, a signal of a healthy future for the site.

Charlie Villanueva, a forward for the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks, has been a chronic tweeter, even facing the wrath of his coach for texting at the halftime intermission of a game earlier this month.

His messages have included letting his followers know he "misses mom's cooking" and has "love for Shaq."

Shaquille O'Neal, the NBA player he referenced, is another obsessive tweeter who doesn't share that love — at halftime of a Phoenix Suns game on Monday, he wrote, "Attention all twitterers. I'ma tweet at halftime and not get fined like vill a new wave a whteva his name is."

But like any new cultural trend on the street, not everyone loves to hear their cellphone go tweet, tweet, tweet.

Marco Sdao, a 33-year-old working in the video gaming industry, signed up for Twitter just recently and says he's already given up on it. He lets me know this, interestingly enough, via Facebook's instant messaging service.

"Well, I initially signed up because some of the guys here at work use it," he writes, "but I lost interest fast."

Sdao says simply updating his status seemed like a pointless endeavour.

"As it is now, I don't think Twitter will ever overtake Facebook as the social networking site of choice," he says.

Dotto says he expects Twitter's stock will continue to soar, though its eventual downfall may come about because of the capriciousness of its core audience, people who could abandon it as quickly as they adopted it.

"The people drawn to Twitter are people on the cutting edge, the real nerds who are resentful of the fact that the general population have found and taken over Facebook," he says.

"Twitter is still out there, it's still on the edge. But once the general population figures that out, those people will quickly move on to the next thing."

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Twitter hits its tipping point; When Britney Spears, Shaq, and Barack Obama joined Twitter.com, it was a sure sign the social-networking site had breached the zeitgeist. And with growth outpacing that of Facebook and MySpace, 2009 could be the year of the tweet.
 

Twitter hits its tipping point; When Britney Spears, Shaq, and Barack Obama joined Twitter.com, it was a sure sign the social-networking site had breached the zeitgeist. And with growth outpacing that of Facebook and MySpace, 2009 could be the year of the tweet.

Photograph by: Screen grab, Twitter

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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